erinptah | WE DID IT (what's next?)

We did it!

That viral "top 100 reasons to vote FOR Biden" list is now "top 100 reasons you're allowed to be happy about this, not just settle for it."

Republican lawsuits against counting legitimate votes keep getting thrown out. Although Mitch McConnell sounds like he's planning to try and Benghazi this -- where they just keep launching new hearings no matter how many times they find zero evidence of wrongdoing, so the average person will think "there must be something to it, or why would they be holding all these hearings?"

But yeah, the whole thing is just one more scam. As usual, the only cases of attempted voter fraud have been from the tiny sliver of Trump supporters who believe his claims that it's totally easy to get away with, and then, surprise surprise, do not get away with it.

Anyway, back to Reasons To Be Happy, all the memes have been a delight, but this is the art that hit me right in the feels:

We just got our first mixed-race Black + Indian + Jamaican woman elected to the White House. Nnnnnice. (One with a startlingly good record on trans rights, and a prosecutorial record that seems to be light on grand headline-grabbing progressive gestures, but heavy on slow concrete detail-oriented progress.)

Finally got it straightened out that her name is pronounced differently from Kamala Khan's, so now instead of pronouncing one of them wrong 100% of the time, I'll get both of them wrong about 50% of the time.

Also! It's not just candidates -- a whole bunch of progressive causes got voted into law last week. Some of my favorites:

Utah and Nebraska voted to remove pro-slavery provisions from their state constitutions
Rhode Island officially dropped the "Plantations" addendum to their name
Mississippi switched to a new state flag with no Confederate imagery
Colorado joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, so now the signatories have a combined 194 electoral votes, and need 74 more

And Puerto Rico cast their third non-binding referendum in favor of statehood. Which a Republican-controlled Senate will be happy to keep ignoring forever...but, thanks to Georgia...

...we might have a shot at getting back the Senate??

One person retired at an awkward time, so both GA senate seats are up for re-election this year. And both of them went into runoffs, to be held January 5, with one Democrat in the running for each.

Some of the groups that flipped the GA presidential race, who could use your support over the next 2 months:

Warnock for Georgia and Ossof for Senate - the campaigns of our two GA senate candidates
Fair Fight - Stacey Abrams' group for registering and mobilizing voters in GA
The New Georgia Project - more GA voter registration and encouragement
Organization for Human Rights and Democracy - grassroots support for issues centered on working-class POC (found through their Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid Fund, specifically supporting POC impacted by COVID-19)

And while I'm at it, some groups that have been making those differences outside Georgia:

Lancaster Stands Up - mobilizing voters and supporting progressive candidates in PA
Southerners On New Ground - building community and supporting intersectional issues centered on LGBTQ people in the South
Four Directions - registering and supporting Native people, including in NV and AZ
Rural Organizing Project - LGBTQ rights, anti-racism, justice for immigrants, and more in OR
Arena - supporting the infrastructure and talent needed to run progressive candidates across the US
WisDems - the Democratic Party in Wisconsin

Gonna spend the rest of 2020 contributing to as many of these as possible. Got recommendations for other swing-state groups to support? Drop some links in the comments.